ryan kennedy's blog

I’ve been a little lax in posting just because I’ve been so busy. Lots of meetings with Bangalore engineers, sampling more of the local food and preparing for my Yahoo! Mail Web Service tech talk (which seemed to go really well).

Tuesday was another work day. We went out to dinner afterwards, an Indian restaurant at the top of a 13 story building. We had balcony seating, which gave us an amazing view of the city at night. I’ve got a picture of the whole team out at dinner up on flickr. In case you couldn’t tell, I’m the fat guy in the green shirt (I need to get back in the gym when I get back to the United States). On the way back, we caught a ride in an auto rickshaw. It’s like a motorcycle, only less safe. There are three wheels and it’s enclosed on the back, front and top. The sides are wide open with a driver seated up front and a bench seat in the back. We piled three of us in the back. Well, sort of “in”, anyway. I ended up with one leg hanging out the side. Anyway, the ride was exciting. Kind of like Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride at Disneyland, only you might die. It was basically the best cab ride ever. Rated right up there with riding in a New York cab. I managed to get 3 minutes of video, as well. Unfortunately, I didn’t get the part where we made a u-turn and almost got pasted by a small, white car. That would have been awesome to get on video.

Wednesday was more meetings. We went to a Chinese restaurant at the Oberoi. It was pretty good, a nice change of pace from all the Indian food we’ve been eating. I like the Indian food, but I miss the variety that I’m used to having back home.

Thursday was the tech talk. That went pretty well (I think). I had several questions afterwards and became quite popular afterwards. Several teams pulled me aside to talk a little about the web service and how they could use it. I also got to see a bad-ass hack using the web service that I hope will one day see the light outside the company. The people I’ve met are all really nice. I’ve never really known the people in the Bangalore office very well, so getting to come out and meet many of them has been a great experience. That night we went back to the Oberoi to hit up Rim Nam, the Thai restaurant. We’d been trying to go there since Monday without luck. We finally got in and the food was decent. Again, the change of food was nice.

That brings it to Friday. It’s only 9:45am here, so I haven’t done very much yet. I had a late night fighting fires at work, so I’m dragging a little bit. There’s not much in the way of meetings for me today, but we’re going to be leaving the office early to go check out Bannerghatta National Park. There’s a safari there where you get to ride through some of the 25,000 acres of wildland. From the reviews I’ve seen, there seems to be a decent variety of native animals to see. Really I’m just looking forward to getting outside the city limits. I’ve been confined to a pretty small area of Bangalore so it’s been hard to form any opinion of the city or of the rest of India. Seeing some countryside will be nice. I remember that being one of my favorite things about having a car in New Zealand, just being able to see so much of the open country between the cities.

Saturday we go to see Mysore. It’s a little bit of a drive to get there, but they have a large palace and other historical sites to go check out. It’ll be interesting to see another city to see how it compares to Bangalore. Aside from the shopping we did on Sunday, and the safari today, the trip to Mysore wil be one of the first tourist activities we’ve had since we arrived.

I’m not sure what all is on the agenda for Sunday. Probably some more shopping. I didn’t get very much on Sunday, so I need to get back out to find some more stuff to bring back.